Boeing art from the late 1970s depicting the construction of a base in low Earth orbit, which in turn would be used to construct components of solar power satellites, which would then be slowly boosted to geosynchronous using electric propulsion. Even though the base would be dwarfed by the SPS itself, the base was monumental in scale compared to any other manned space facility proposed before or since.

The artwork (scanned from a brochure that was folded down the middle, thus there’s a half-repaired fold line) depicts not only a Space Shuttle orbiter, but also the second stage of a ballistically recoverable Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle.

I have posted the full-rez version at the APR Patreon Extras Dropbox folder for 2015-08 (while it’s 2015-09 now, the file began the process of uploading at 11:59 PM by my watch, so…). If interested, please check out the APR Patreon and consider joining. Lots of benefits!

Here’s something you don’t see every day. Two guys fishing on the Warrior River in Alabama were surprised when not one but two kittens decided that their boat was the place to be and swam out to ’em.

Most cats will avoid people. Every now and then you find one that comes to you. Those cats… they’re keepers. All my cats have been like that. But I’ve never had one *swim* to me. Makes you wonder what the back story is here. Also makes ya wonder what the update is here… hopefully the kittens will find themselves some good homes. One story says that a family offered to adopt them, but doesn’t say if they actually did.

Scary as this beast looked, that funky jawline full of fangs would have been largely harmless to anything much bigger than a bug. It seems this thing was a filter feeder, using that immobile vertical “mouth” in its upper beak as a trap for the worms or shrimp or whatever it likely scraped up from the mud on the ocean floor.

Boeing’s “Silent Strike” portable laser weapon, two kilowatts of directed energy on a gimbal. Useful for shooting down drones. Possibly also handy for long-distance magic tricks (use your imagination… can you think of anything that might benefit from suddenly spiking to two thousand degrees?).

So, what links these two? Both are cases of people who are defined by their ability to be offended by the inoffensive. Both are cases of people who think that the imagined slights they wrap their lives around are so serious that they feel the need to take it out on others. Both are likely pointers towards the society of tomorrow where wholly *insane* people control the very words people use.

The concept of “anchor babies” is much in the news lately. The idea is simple… non-US citizens get into the US via means legal or otherwise, have a baby on US soil, the baby is automatically a US citizen (via “birthright citizenship”), and now the family is “anchored” to the US and can’t be deported. And now that they’re anchored here, they can bring in even more family.

Lots of people have a problem with this, and for good reason. In the US, birthright citizenship is established via the 14th Amendment, a fact I’ve heard a lot of talking heads dispute. Some want to amend the Constitution to remove birthright citizenship for illegal aliens; others claim that the 14th Amendment doesn’t actually provide birthright citizenship for illegal aliens, that we only *assume* it does because the Supreme Court has ruled that way. But there’s a problem… what the Amendment actually says:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” is really freakin’ clear.

Now, you might not like the fact that the 14th does, in fact, provide for birthright citizenship of the children of illegal aliens. But… it does. That’s the way it’s written. It might not have been what the writers of the amendment had in mind, but that doesn’t matter; all that matters is what the Constitution says. Re-interpretting a clearly written clause to mean something it clearly doesn’t mean is some rat-bastard skulduggery and should be wholly avoided. So, what to do?

First option would be to amend the Constitution to simply point out that birthright citizenship is only for those whose parents, at least one of ’em, was here legally at the time of birth. To be blunt… this ain’t gonna happen. Amending the Constitution in a way that would deny a whole bunch of future Democrat voters? Not going to pass.

There is, however, a simpler solution. Accept the reality of birthright citizenship. Accept the new citizens into the fold. And… kick their parents out. This is in fact the way the current legal system seems to see it; a minor US citizen cannot sponsor a family member to come into the US legally until the age of 21. So just because the kid is a US citizen means *diddly* about legalizing the parents.

Many have complained about deportations because they “break up families.” Well, boo friggen’ hoo. If a mother and father make a habit of robbing banks, the justice system isn’t going to decide against jailing them because they have kids. So, give the illegal alien parents a choice: sign over their kid to the US to go into the foster system, or take the kid with them back to their homeland. Eighteen years later the kid can return on his/her own as a US citizen, but that doesn’t mean he/she can bring other family members.

To do otherwise would be to accept that the US immigration code rewards criminal actions. I believe pretty much everyone will agree that if a law it written so that criminality is rewarded, that law ain’t right. Changing the US code to preclude the *families* of birthright citizens from profiting from anchor babies would seem far easier than amending the Constitution.

So it seems to me the best way to deal with anchor babies is to simply enforce the immigration laws as they currently are: deport illegals when they’re caught. Simple.

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Another issue about anchor babies is that a lot of people seem to assume that this is a phenomenon sorta specific to illegals from Latin America. But the majority of illegal aliens as a whole seem to be coming not from the south, but from the west… Asians coming to the US legally and overstaying their visas. Additionally, “birth tourism” seems to be a phenomenon largely Chinese in origin, where pregnant Chinese women legally come to the US on “vacation” and stay long enough to give birth, giving their child US citizenship. And then… they and their child return to China. The idea seems to be that 18 or so years later the kid can come to the US and claim citizenship and then being the process of sponsoring the parents. This seems to be a dubious prospect… why would a kid necessarily *want* to do this? It is at the very least thinking in the very long term.

Another rare piece of early Dyna Soar color art. This one shows the Dyna Soar heading to space atop the centaur upper stage of an Atlas booster. And if you think you are seeing corrugations on the back of the spaceplane, you are correct. At this stage in the design process the Dyna Soar *did* […]

So the media is currently ulcerating over Trump suggesting that he’d like to see NFL owners fire players who decide to disrespect the US flag & anthem before games. Here’s the thing: 1: It’s the players right to disrespect the flag, the anthem, the US. 2: It’s any citizens right to say that he’d like […]

Yes, I’ve posted these before. But I feel it’s important for everyone to maintain a proper level of understanding of the encabulator, the turbo-encabulator and the retro-encabulator. And of course once you have an encabulator, you’ll need to diagnose it from time to time: There have of course been advances in the field […]

Argh. Facebook is not my favorite thing. But, apparently, it’s where all the cool kids hang out, so the Aerospace Projects Review Facebook page that I cobbled together years ago, I’ve started posting things in again. One of the weird things about Facebook is that you (apparently) can’t see a page unless you are signed […]

Oh, boy! Mayhem! A Group Of 62 Catholics Has Accused The Pope Of Spreading Heresy Not being Catholic, I have no dog in this fight. Still, it’s always entertaining when religious leaders tell other religious leaders they’re wrong. Wacky hijinks often ensue.

So, Star Trek Discovery plopped onto the airwaves tonight. My review: It was certainly pretty, but all those visuals were spoiled by a whole lot of “WTF am I looking at?” Especially with the “Klingons” who bore almost no relationship to any prior iteration of the Klingons, in biology, aesthetics or culture. Heck, they even […]

… in a drone: This is pretty much exactly the sort of footage that would have been impossible to get prior to the current generation of drones. So just imagine what people will be able to film once the batteries for drones are actually *good,* with the power and energy density of chemical fuels like […]

OK, let’s say your town is plagued by a transdimensional monster that takes the form of a killer psychotic clown. Who would be the best person to try to destroy this menace? That’s right, the goddamn Batman: And because why not: Bill Nye just walked into our elevator while I was snap chatting.. pic.twitter.com/LwCOITAEft […]

A deli worker was attacked, someone came across the counter and slashed at him with a knife. He fought back with a knife of his own, and the other guy got the worse of it. So, what happened? Did the city of New York throw the deli worker a ticker tape parade? Give him the […]